An Awesome Houston Oiler Public Service Announcement

Granted, there's plenty to be entertained by in this collection of early-`70s TV ads. If you don't love the huge land-yacht 1973 Lincoln-Mercurys, which look big enough to land helicopters on, you're bound to like the "small" version, which retains all the luxury in a more efficient body (that nevertheless looks like it's about a half-acre or so).

But Houston Oiler fans will like the ad at the six-minute mark (right after Joe Namath tells us there's nothing he enjoys more than hot buttered popcorn! "Nestled between the cheeks of a Playboy bunny's ass," he somehow doesn't add).

After Namath comes Oiler Ron Billingsley in a public service announcement.

Let's just say Billingsley looks like an Oiler defensive lineman should: huge shoulders and arms in a skintight collared shirt, helmet hair and what looks to be a bolo tie.

"I'm Ron Billingsley of the Houston Oilers," he rumbles. "You know, I've got to work pretty hard to make the headlines. But for some kids it's easy."

And then he shows the headline of the paper he's holding, an EXTRA! edition of The Daily Tribune, one of the nation's great newspapers, we assume.

The EXTRA!!! headline blares in "War Declared"-size type: "Drug Addict, 12, Found Dead In Alley." (And actually, there's not a second comma after the numeral, so for all we know it may concern a drug addict and a dozen other people.)

Billingsley then urges people to volunteer to help youth, which of course is a good thing.

There's an equally hard-core ad for the same effort earlier in the clip, with the Denver Broncos' Floyd Little holding a gun and some bullets and saying that's all that's left of some kid.

We're glad we live in less-violent times, when NFL public service announcements concern themselves with players getting kids to exercise.